The Office of National Statistics has recently published its latest figures around industrial disputes, one of the highlights being the record low number of days lost to strikes, with a similar low for other forms of industrial action. So, does this trumpet the success of the Trade Union Act 2016? In short, no.

To those of us involved in industrial relations the latest figures are unlikely to come as much of a surprise. The statistics around strikes have been running at record lows for a number of years now. What IS strange is that, unless they have a record of doing so, many employers remain reluctant to engage constructively with unions. This often seems to their being wedded to views of the role and operation of unions that weren’t even that accurate in the 1970s, from whence they originate. Indeed, if you genuinely want to communicate with your staff, the structure and training they can gain through a union presence can make the process significantly easier and more efficient.

So why have I attached a picture Charles de Gaulle airport? Well, mainly because French Air Traffic Control is virtually synonymous with “on strike”, and I was drawn to a recent article examining industrial relations in France and how it relates to the UK. An interesting factor in France is that union membership is only around 8%, meaning that it’s really only union representatives who join. This phenomenon was examined in Economist magazine back in 2014:

…the real source of French union strength today is the statutory powers they enjoy as joint managers, along with business representatives, of the country’s health and social-security system, and as employee representatives in the workplace. Under French law, elected union delegates represent all employees, union members or not, in firms with over 50 staff on both works councils and separate health-and-safety councils. These must be consulted regularly by bosses on a vast range of detailed managerial decisions. This gives trade unions a daily say in the running of companies across the private sector, which accounts for the real strength of their voice.

So, in effect, people in France don’t join trade unions because they don’t need to, so long as there are enough people willing to act on their behalf.

Returning to the UK, there has been a long-term downward trend in unions taking strikes, one that was well established well before the Trade Union Act 2016 kicked in to make taking industrial action more difficult. For the last several decades, unions have been adapting to increasingly exacting legal requirements to take industrial action, meaning it is still perplexing why the TUA 2016 was put in place at all (and it remains unclear if it is consistent with human rights legislation which enshrines the right to withdraw labour). Unions’ main approach has been to become more effective at influencing, better prepared to be persuasive negotiators and of more constructive value to employers that are prepared to engage constructively with them.

I’m currently working with several clients, some of whom face difficulties engaging collectively with their workforce because they lack representative structures, and others that simply want to improve how they interact with their unions to the benefit of everyone in the company. The common theme is that, if you want to avoid disagreements with your staff, discuss things with them substantively and discuss them early and, ideally, draw out any ideas they can add. The better people understand the problem, the better they will understand the solution.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

It’s hard to believe that the world of work is still so dangerous. Many of us underestimate the risk of the things we do each day. How many people in the UK treat driving along the road as the single most dangerous thing they do? Yet every day 5 people die doing just that. The same goes for many of the activities we do every day at work – lifting and carrying heavy boxes, walking up and down stairs (especially while talking on your mobile phone), etc. There’s a long list of things we all do in our working day, often without thinking, that are significantly more dangerous than we ever give them credit.

Some people describe taking precautions to prevent such activities from injuring people as “health & safety gone mad”. However, that view disrespects the aim to make sure people go home as healthy as they were when they arrived at work. In spite of those measures, 142 people in the UK still died after going to work in 2014/15. Even more worrying are the estimates of 13,000 people dying each year because of past exposure to harmful conditions at work, 8,000 people dying of occupation-related cancers and 4,000 from exposure to dust, fumes or chemicals. And that’s in the UK where we’ve had the Health & Safety at Work Act in place since 1974.

One worker dies every 15 seconds worldwide. 6,000 workers die every day. More people die whilst at work than those fighting wars.

International Workers’ Memorial Day is a reminder not to be complacent, to avoid seeing common sense anticipation of ‘accidents’, and taking steps to stop them from happening, as an unnecessary imposition.

IMWD also provides an opportunity to reflect, to remember the people in the UK and across the world who have died trying to support their families and possibly to attend one of the many events to mark the Day across the country.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

A recent survey published by Sky News has suggested that a majority of Britons think that feminism has gone far enough. But has it? There are clear contradictions within the findings: 70% of people think men are paid more than women for the same work; 65% believe a man will be favoured over an equally qualified woman, yet:

a total of 67% of Britons think feminism has either gone too far (40%) or gone as far it should go (27%)

Perplexingly, women themselves are almost as prone to thinking that enough is enough, with 61% either thinking feminism has gone too far (35%) or has gone far enough (26%).

Whether or not this recent finding is a manifestation of the increasing refrain of “PC gone mad” is a matter of speculation, but it is disappointing that attitudes seem to be so at odds with reality.

That said, some progress is being made – UK companies employing more than 250 people now have less than a month until they have to report their gender pay gaps, which I suspect will leave many scrabbling to reach some kind of balance. Others may, as has been done for many years, identify that a small or reducing gap means that enough is being done.

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work

The UK signed up for that 80 years ago this coming December, passed the Equal Pay Act in 1970, and pulled other discrimination together in the Equalities Act 2010, yet we still don’t seem able to deliver the non-discriminating, fair society to which those commitments aspire. Everyone has a value, and everyone should be respected.

The sad thing is that 110 years since its origin in the USA, there is still a need for International Women’s Day because, while the UK is significantly better than many countries, we still have a very, very long way to go until women are truly treated as equals in all aspects of society.

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but the Cameron Government’s decision to charge fees for people to raise claims in the Employment Tribunal has finally been shown to be illegal.

Fees were never introduced in Northern Ireland, and it is notable that there was no drop off in the number of applications to go to their Industrial Tribunal. Meanwhile, across Great Britain, ET applications plummeted by 70%. In Scotland, the SNP Government stood for election in 2015 with a pledge that, as soon as they had the power to do so, they would legislate to remove Employment Tribunal fees, justifying this on the premise that someone who has just unfairly lost their employment is unlikely to be able to find the money and will, therefore, be denied access to justice.

Introduced in 2013, fees were initially justified as being to reduce the number of “weak claims”, though a financial incentive later became apparent with the Justice Minister at the time stating

We want people, where they can, to pay a fair contribution for the system they are using, which will encourage them to look for alternatives.

That case was never particularly convincing and the result, inevitably, was that many people with a valid claim were unable to bring it because they couldn’t pay the fee.

Alongside the fees, the Cameron Government also introduced mandatory Early Conciliation. This is a process whereby the parties, with facilitation by ACAS, can try to reach an out of court settlement and is something applicants have to do before they can complete their ET application. Although there’s nothing wrong with this in principle, my experience of it wasn’t good. I have found few employers prepared to negotiate towards a settlement, preferring to gamble on whether or not the applicant could find enough cash for the fee. Perhaps, with fees now found to be illegal, there will be a greater incentive for all sides to take a more pragmatic, conciliatory approach.

That principle also filters through to ET applications. Unions take great care in presenting cases, cases they support are exceptionally unlikely to be regarded by the Tribunal as “malicious, vexatious or frivolous” or “in bad faith”, and a significant proportion are successful.

Of course, most trade unions opted to pay these fees for their members, but many, many people who weren’t in a union must have been denied access to justice by this ill-conceived policy. While it is likely that those who applied to the ET will have their fees repaid, at this stage it seems likely that those who couldn’t afford the fee at the time will have missed their opportunity, but it remains to be seen if any pragmatism will be shown in that respect.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the issues raised in this article, so please leave a comment or, if you’d like to discuss anything more directly, please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

This extremely useful summary by David Morgan at Burgess Paull of the upcoming changes through the Trade Union Act caught my eye, and brought to mind some of the key issues surrounding the Act.

The existence of this legislation in the first place is a bizarre piece of ideological policy making, since it certainly isn’t/wasn’t responding to an actual need. To quote from the Office of National Statistics:

“The 2015 working days lost total (170,000) is not only lower than the total last year, but is the second lowest annual total since records began in 1891 (the lowest was 157,000 in 2005).”

As well as being of questionable need, the legality of the provisions has been questioned in many quarters, but most notably, perhaps by the Governments own Equality & Human Rights Commission. In January last year, the EHCR warned that the provisions may breach international law, stating:

“As it stands, the Trade Union Bill is in danger of imposing potentially unlawful restrictions on everyone’s basic human right to strike. Joining a trade union and peacefully picketing outside workplaces is a right not a privilege and restrictions have to be properly justified and proportionate.”

Although some changes were made before the Bill passed into law, research compiled by the Industrial Law Society suggests that these did little to address concerns in relation to human rights. If this latter article is correct, although we might have expected to see a number of challenges under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights should employers opt to assert the new laws, these cases will be difficult to build and therefore may not emerge. Most of the large unions seem to be focusing their efforts on getting better organised, while experience shows that they will adapt to the new legal framework in spite of the additional inconvenience.

Interestingly, and in stark contrast to the Whitehall position, the Scottish Government announced in November 2016 that it was creating a Trade Union Modernisation Fund “to support modernisation of trade unions and help mitigate the negative impacts of UK legislation.” In that context, it will be interesting to see if there are differences of approach north and south of the border once the legislation has been enacted.

Of course, I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

The French now have an absolute right NOT to check their e-mail out of hours, but why do people do it in the first place? Is a law necessary? And how much of it comes as an expectation of the employer, and how much is self-inflicted?

I suspect there may be a PhD in accurately finding the answer to these questions, but few employment contracts demand that you are available and responding 24 hours a day and for most people the actual expectation is that they work their normal contract hours, plus give a bit of flexibility when they need to get something done. It’s interesting that France has felt the need to protect people from the pressure (perhaps to protect them from themselves?) by introducing a law that guarantees the right not to check e-mail when you’re not working.

In the days of paper correspondence, people would expect a response to their communication perhaps within the week, but after 5 or 6 days was often the best that could be achieved once everything was balanced into the diary. That steadily changed as electronic communication came to the fore.

The step changes in expectation, however, came with the rise of the laptop and the BlackBerry. While the traditional BlackBerry is an endangered species, teetering on the verge of extinction, more and more people are carrying a smart phone on which they can not only send and receive e-mail, but they can browse the internet, log into cloud drives, even edit documents.

I’ve had colleagues in the past who expected instant responses to their e-mails – one reportedly started criticising my lack of response because I hadn’t replied within 2 hours of them e-mailing me. Whether or not that was true, the fact that someone was prepared to relay it indicates how believable it is in the modern world of work that expectations have become so utterly and completely unreasonable.

This whole situation has become exacerbated by the increasing use of Twitter and other social media by businesses looking to communicate with their customers and clients. Twitter has brought the expectation of instant responses, or at least within a few minutes, to the extent that some staff are now being tasked with responding to all Tweets within very short timescales, while there has been a growth in suppliers offering social media management services so you can outsource the “instant” responses and focus on more considered answers to legitimate questions.

It is inevitable that this focus on more and more rapid response should spill into people feeling they’re not doing their job properly if they don’t meet the timescales. That, combined with increasing presenteeism, means people are often tempted into having a quick check of their work e-mail once they get home. Or just before they go to bed. Or as soon as they wake up in the morning. Or while they’re SUPPOSED to be off work ill. This last one is particularly concerning as the increased stress will undoubtedly delay their recovery, while they are unlikely to get any thanks or recognition from their employer for having done so. Indeed, a responsible employer should be seeking to stop such behaviour, as has been reported on the parts of Volkswagen, Daimler, Axa and other companies.

To highlight the folly of this lifestyle change, keep an eye out for more information about Work Your Proper Hours Day, an annual event instigated 13 years ago. Given the amount of unpaid overtime you probably work, including checking your e-mails out of hours, WYPHD falls on the day each year when you (as an average worker) actually start to get paid for the work you do. And in 2015 people in the UK worked £31.5 billion worth of hours without getting paid a penny. This year it falls on Friday 24th February.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787

We draw on years of experience working collaboratively and constructively to achieve the right outcome to complex industrial relations situations. We deliver straightforward advice, training and solutions that encourage and develop relationships based on understanding, cooperation and trust.

Our open and honest approach ensures fairness to all sides whilst guaranteeing the needs of both the individual and the organisation are properly considered. Having worked with Trade Unions for years we understand the need for clear and concise communication, whilst influencing and negotiating in an expert manner.

You can expect us to thoroughly explore your problems, ensuring that we properly understand the problem before we start working towards a solution. We will also keep an open line of communication to ensure that you are fully aware and involved in developing approaches.

The long and the short of it is that nothing will change immediately – the impact of European case law remains unchanged, albeit the vast, vast majority of case law originates through the UK’s Employment Tribunal system (primarily at EAT and Court of Appeal).

EU Directives on Employment Law are implemented through enactment into UK Legislation, usually by Regulation, less frequently by primary legislation. In this respect, many of the laws that have originated from the EU have become workplace norms (e.g. protection of fixed-term workers and part-time workers).

There is a risk that more recent and less accepted legislation may be under pressure to be repealed (e.g. Regulations on Agency Workers). There may also be changes over time in relation to the calculation of holiday pay and accrual of annual leave during sickness absence.

No doubt a surprise to many, there are various aspects of Employment Law where the UK provides greater than that stipulated by EU Regulations. This covers holiday rights, protection against discrimination, TUPE (which covers service provision transfer in the UK, unlike elsewhere in Europe), etc.

That said, companies working throughout Europe and currently depending on UK laws to meet the requirements for a European Works Council may need to review their arrangements.

What about the rights of EU Nationals to work in the UK? Well, it’s again difficult to say as yet, but special permissions may be needed to work here in future, perhaps with sponsorship, as is the case for non-EU nationals, but in the meantime, EU nationals working here are entitled to stay and continue working. The main protagonists on the Leave side made contradictory statements, so it is difficult to tell what may change, though Theresa May stated a desire to clarify this point quickly, while Nicola Sturgeon has moved to say their position is secure in Scotland.

But what will happen if there are non-UK nationals applying for jobs now? If they are employed, they may be forced to leave in a year or two’s time, but NOT employing them because of that would currently be illegal discrimination.

The UK currently already has a points based system for non-EU nationals which COULD be extended, at least for skilled workers, though Tier 3 (unskilled workers) would need to be reactivated. There hasn’t been a need for non-EU unskilled workers because that gap has been filled from within the EU, but that source is clearly likely to dry up as/when the UK withdraws from the Single Market. If employers have a need for unskilled workers that they can’t meet from domestic recruitment, this needs to be flagged up with the Government.

In delivering a course on Human Rights, I learnt that we all know less than we ought to, and concluded that Human Rights are a key Industrial Relations issue.

During September and October, I was proud to be working with the Workers’ Educational Association Scotland in delivering a training course titled Whit’s Sae Wrang Wi’ Human Richts? The idea was to help students understand the Government’s proposed changes in Human Rights legislation, consider the implications and contribute to a more informed debate.

In delivering the course, I also learnt a lot about both human rights as a topic and about attitudes towards them in the UK.

Wow, do we take human rights for granted!

There are regular stories in the tabloids about the extreme cases that have ended up in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the current proposals suggest that control needs to be taken back into the UK courts. The fascinating aspect is that the Human Rights Act was developed to do just that – prior to its enactment the only recourse people had was through Strasbourg, afterwards they had the whole UK court system to go through to find a resolution so now only a handful of cases (only 4 in 2014) reach the EHCR.

It was also fascinating to see how the media draws out the human rights aspects of a story only in certain circumstances. The people fleeing from war and physical danger in North Africa started as a “swarm of migrants”, became “refugees” when a small boy was found dead after his attempted journey to freedom, and reverted to “migrants” again when the suggestion was made that the UK should perhaps accept more of them.

Not once in all the coverage did I see a mention of the human rights of these people – Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”, while Article 14 says “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. Perhaps these Articles fell into a political blind spot…

More concerning are the human rights that we have singularly failed to observe in this country. Article 23 of the UDHR, to which all countries in the world(*) are signatories, provides that “Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work” and “Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration”. The continuing pay gap between men and women is witness to the fact that the UK has yet to fully grasp the nettle of human rights and to deliver what needs to be delivered to meet a commitment that we made almost 70 years ago.

And so to the Trade Union Bill, defeated at the second reading in the House of Lords. The newspaper headlines are all about the impact on Labour Party funding, seemingly ignoring the implications for trade unions and their ability to organise industrial action, especially to strike. A week ago, Lorna McGregor, a Commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: “As it stands, the Trade Union Bill is in danger of imposing potentially unlawful restrictions on everyone’s basic human right to strike. Joining a trade union and peacefully picketing outside workplaces is a right not a privilege and restrictions have to be properly justified and proportionate.”

Which leads to one inevitable conclusion – industrial relations are a human rights issue!